New Light On Old Stories About Marshal Tukhachevskii : Some Documents
Reconsidered

The innocence of Marshal Tukhachevskii and the other military commanders condemned with
him in 1937 has become firmly accepted by both Soviet and Western historians.1The current scholarly consensus also includes the
view that "the nazi secret archives contain no sort of evidence of anything"
like a plot between the Soviet military and Germany, that "not a jot of evidence has
emerged from the German archives."2 The present
article re-examines some of the material bearing upon the Tukhachevskii case which has
come to light so far from the captured German Foreign Office files, and concludes that it
suggests a plot of some kind involving Tukhachevskii and the German High Command may, in
fact, have existed.

In 1974 a newly-discovered document from these files was examined by British historian
Frederick L. Carsten.3 It is a report concerning
high-level rumors current in Munich in early 1937, which ended up in the Vienna Bureau of
the Austrian Chancellor. Among other matters it deals with relations between the German
and Soviet military commanders, about which it makes four points: 1) It claims that the
top men in the German General Staff, including Generaloberst Freiherr Werner von Fritsch,
Chief of Staff of the German Army (Chef der Heeresleitung), were at that time
involved in trying to form an alliance with the Soviet military. 2) It claims that Marshal
Tukhachevskii had been present at the German army's autumn maneuvers in the past year (den
vorjährigan detuschen Herbstmanoevern). 3) At that time Tukhachevskii is said to have
proposed a toast to the German Army "as the champion (Vorkämpferin) against
world Jewry." and to Goëring. 4) It claims that the German military was closely
following the "power struggle presently taking place in Russia," in hopes that
Stalin would be overthrown in favor of a military dictatorship.4

Carsten denies the validity of the first three of these points on several grounds: 1)
He claims that the last time any Russian officers attended German maneuvers was the autumn
of 1933. 2) Though admitting that Tukhachevskii congratulated General Ernst Köstring,
German military attaché in Moscow, upon the German army's successful occupation of the
Rhineland in March 1936, Carsten avers that "this is a far cry from being a declared
anti-semite and a sympathizer with the Nazi ideology. Even Karl Radek congratulated
General Köstring on the same occasion in Moscow."5 3) For Carsten, the existence of this document is explained by the story
that Reinhardt Heydrich's Sicherheitsdienst (SK, the intelligence division of the
SS) was busy fabricating a dossier of forged materials to incriminate Tukhachevskii and
decapitate the Soviet military. No doubt, then the SD would have been "spreading this
kind of `news' about Tukhachevskii, his sympathies with Nazism and his allegedly intimate
relations with leading German officers."6

The present article uses an analysis of this report from the Austrian Bundeskanzleramt
(BKA) as a framework within which other documents, including those from the German Foreign
Office files which bear on the Tukhachevskii case, are re-examined. It examines each of
the assertions (one through four) in the document, and each of Professor Carsten's
objections (1 through 3).

General Ernst Köstring, former German military attaché in Moscow, stated in memoires
published in 1965 that "Autumn 1935 was the last instance of Russian officers
participating (Teilnahme) in our maneuvers."7 Evidently Carsten has misinterpreted this passage, for Köstring says
nothing to rule out Soviet attendance at, as opposed to participation in, German maneuvers
in later years. In letters to Paris at the time General Renondeau, French military
attach to Berlin, reported that Soviet officers attended German army maneuvers in
both 1936 and 1937.8 Apparently either Komkor
(corps commander) Orlov (according to Renondeau) or Komandarm (army commander) Uborevich
(as Walter Görlitz has it) were present at German maneuvers in autumn 1936.9 Tukhachevskii, Uborevich, and Orlov were closely
associated with the Soviet military cooperation with Germany under the Treaty of Rapallo.
This association might account for the rumor, reported in the Austrian BKA document, that
it was Tukhachevskii who had attended the 1936 German maneuvers (point one) --
particularly since the marshal had visited Berlin at least once in 1936.10 Thus the rumor is perhaps not very wide of the mark.

Carsten would have it (2) that it is hard to believe Tukhachevskii would have made such
a pro-Nazi and anti- Semitic toast as the document recounts. In fact, the opposite is
true: such a statement would have been entirely consistent with what was widely reputed to
be Tukhachevskii's attitude.

In 1928 a former French officer published a short biography of Tukhachevskii
"Pierre Fervacque" -- nom de plume of the French journalist Remy Roure --
had been Tukhachevskii's fellow prisoner-of-war in 1917 in the German officers' camp at
Ingolstadt, Bavaria. In his biographical sketch he set down the contents of several
conversations he had had with the young Russian lieutenant during their captivity, among
them the following:

-- You are an anti-semite, then, I said to him. Why? -- The Jews brought us
Christianity. That's reason enough to hate them. But then they are a low race. I don't
even speak of the dangers they create in my country. You cannot understand that, you
French, for you equality is a dogma. The Jew is a dog, son of a dog, which spreads his
fleas in every land. It is he who has done the most to inoculate us with the plague of
civilization, and who would like to give us his morality also, the morality of money, of
capital. -- You are now a socialist, then? -- A socialist? Not at all! What a need you
have for classifying! Besides the great socialists are Jews and socialist doctrine is a
branch of universal Christianity. ... No, I detest socialists, Jews and Christians.11

Tukhachevskii never protested the contents of this well-known book. On the contrary,
until shortly before his execution Tukhachevskii maintained friendly relations with Roure.
He spoke with the French journalist at a banquet in Paris in 1936, and then three days
later held another, private, conversation with him. Roure recalled in July 1937 that, in
his book, he had portrayed the young Tukhachevskii as expressing horror and disgust for
Western civilization and a juvenile love of "barbarism" in hair-raising tones
(which, we note, could have come from the most radical Nazis). Twenty years later
Tukhachevskii had mellowed, had become an admirer of French culture, but remained a
"patriotic" pan-Slavic nationalist and imperialist who felt that, by serving
Bolshevism, he had served his country.12

We have examined and rejected Carsten's first two objections to the Austrian BKA
report, and in so doing have determined that the second and third points made in that
report accord well with facts attested elsewhere. We now turn to points four and one of
the Austrian document. The fourth point is the claim that the German military was watching
the "power struggle" (meaning the Moscow trials) in the USSR in hopes that a
military dictatorship might replace Stalin. In December 1936 the Soviet government
assigned David Kandelaki, head of the Soviet Trade Delegation to Germany, the task of
"feeling out" the German government concerning the possibility of opening secret
talks. By early 1937 Hitler had turned the USSR down,13 as is illustrated in an interesting document, noted by Erickson,
from the German Foreign Office files whose significance for the Tukhachevskii Affair has
not yet been appreciated. This is a letter to Dr. Hjalmar Schacht (head of the Reichsbank
and the person whom Kandelaki had approached concerning the Soviet Government's desire for
formal secret talks) from the German Foreign Minister, Baron Constantine von Neurath.14 In this letter Neurath summarizes Hitler's
view, with which Neurath also declares his agreement. This is expressed as follows:

As concerning the eventual acceptance of talks with the Russian government, I am, in
agreement with the Führer, of the view that they could not lead to any result at this
time, would rather be made great use of by the Russians to achieve the goal they seek of a
closer military alliance with France and, if possible, to achieve as well a further
rapprochement with England. A declaration by the Russian government that it dissociates
itself from Comintern agitation, after the experience with these declarations in England
and France, would be of no practical use whatever and therefore be unsatisfactory.

Neurath adds an interesting qualification: "It would be another thing if matters
in Russia should develop in the direction of an absolute despotism propped up by the
military. In this event we should not let the opportunity pass us by to involve ourselves
in Russia again." The Neurath-Schacht letter is dated 11 February, 1937, while the
cover letter to the Austrian BKA document, on BKA stationery, is dated four days later,
and the report itself deals with the previous month. Thus the letter proves that the rumor
set down in the report does, in fact, reflect the real views of the Nazi hierarchy at
precisely the time it claims: in other words, the Neurath-Schacht letter strikingly
verifies point four of the Austrian BKA report.

In early 1937 there were two leading military figures in the soviet Union:
Tukhachevskii and the Commissar for Defense, Marshal Kliment Voroshilov. It was well known
that tensions within the top leadership of the Soviet military were profound.15 Too much should not be made of an argument e
silentio. But later in the same letter Neurath may be tacitly letting Schacht know
which one of the two Soviet military leaders he means: "In this connection I should
also note, for your personal information, that, according to reliable information reaching
us concerning the events in Russia, there is nothing to any slit between Stalin and
Voroshilov. So far as can be determined, this rumor, which is being spread by our press as
well, originated in interested circles in Warsaw." Perhaps this passage suggests
that, with Voroshilov still a staunch Stalinist, German would only be interested in talks
with Russia in the event of a military dictatorship under Tukhachevskii

There remains the first point in the Austrian BKA report, the supposed attempt by the
German General Staff to form an alliance with the Soviet Army. To begin with, we note that
Neurath was very close to Fritsch and to General Blomberg, worked with them behind
Hitler's back on several occasions, and was replaced as foreign minister by Ribbentrop on
4 February, 1938, the same day that Fritsch and Blomberg resigned and dozens of other
generals and officials were dismissed to be replaced by officers more compliant with
Hitler's desire for war.16 If Fritsch were
in secret touch with Tukhachevskii, Neurath might well have been informed. But there is
other evidence of a Tukhachevskii-Fritsch connection.

In his famous book I Paid Hitler, Fritz Thyssen, the former German steel
magnate, one of the immensely influential "Schlotbarone," the Ruhr heavy
industry magnates, and an early member of the Nazi party explicitly associated
Tukhachevskii with Fritsch: "Fritsch always advocated an alliance with Russia, though
not with a Communist Russia. Attempts were made to establish relations between Fritsch and
the Russian generalissimo, Tukhachevskii The two had one point in common: each desired to
overthrow the dictator in his own country."17

Thyssen was certainly in a position to know of the kind of secret liaisons he alleges
here, and may have been in on it too, since by 1936 or 1937 he himself was deeply
disillusioned with Hitler. Professor Erickson, who cites this passage but would clearly
like to dismiss it, confidently states in the text of his book that "not a single
item of evidence has emerged to justify the charge of treasonable contact with the
Germans." However, in a footnote on the same page he refers to the `Thyssen passage
quoted above, and adds the following remark: "It is difficult to know where the
support for this statement comes from, although there was a contemporary Polish newspaper
report that a letter or note from Fritsch had been seized from Tukhachevskii."18

There is yet more evidence from the German Foreign Office files hinting at a link
between Tukhachevskii and the German General Staff. This is the set of documents referred
to on page 435 of Erickson's study, The Soviet High Command. These documents record
the loan, between February and November, 1937, of military court papers concerning
Tukhachevskii when he was a prisoner-of-war in Germany during World War I (the court
papers themselves are not extant). A study of the four loan request documents reveals that
the Tukhachevskii files were requested from the Potsdam branch of the Heeresarchiv
(army archives) by the Wehrmachtamt, Aus. (Ausland) VI, the section which
dealt with foreigners. Wehrmachtamt requested it on behalf of the "GZ."
This is the abbreviation for Generalstab-Zentralstellung, the main headquarters of
the German General Staff.19 GZ was of
course in Berlin, and was headed by General von Fritsch.

It is noteworthy that someone in Fritsch's Berlin HQ was apparently showing some
considerable interest in Tukhachevskii at precisely the same time that: 1) the report to
the Austrian BKA told of Fritsch's interest in an alliance with the Soviet military -- a
report backed up by Thyssen's testimony; and 2) both that report and Neurath speak of an
interest in a military coup in the USSR.

Our examination of the Austrian BKA report shows that, as regards German-Soviet
military relations, it is highly consistent with other evidence available. Points one,
three, and four are fully consistent with this other evidence, while point two may simply
be due to a confusion (or may even be correct as well). We have also disposed of the first
two of Professor Carsten's objections to it. However, there remains his third point: that
the documents might have been related to the well-known SD plot to forge a dossier
incriminating Tukhachevskii as a traitor. The whole matter of this alleged forgery is very
complex, and cannot be unraveled in this article. In addition, it is in principle
impossible to prove a negative -- in this case, that no German forgery attempt was
made. One can merely examine the evidence cited to support the existence of such a forgery
attempt and see how it holds up. This said, several considerations are relevant to the
matter at hand.

First, the crucial sources for the "SD-NKVD forgery" story are untrustworthy.
In his introduction to the English edition of Walter Schellenberg's memoires, Alan Bullock
concludes: "nor would it be wise to accept Schellenberg as a trustworthy witness
where his evidence cannot be corroborated." Erickson also points out several
important passages of Schellenberg's which he recognizes cannot be true.20 The account by Alfried Naujocks, the SS man who claimed to have been
personally responsible for organizing the forgery and who is usually taken at his word, is
even more patently false.21

Second, according to all the accounts of the forgery plot, Hitler and Himmler were both
a party to it. But nothing of the kind could be inferred from their later references to
the military purges. For example, Himmler is reported to have discussed the Tukhachevskii
Affair in a conversation with the renegade Soviet General A. A. Vlasov on 16 September
1944 in a manner which makes it clear he believed Tukhachevskii had been guilty of some
plotting: "Himmler asked Vlasov about the Tukhachevskii Affair. Why this had gone
awry. Vlasov gave a frank answer: 'Tukhachevskii made the same mistake that your people
made on 20 July 21a. He did not know the law of masses.'"22 In an important speech in Posen on 4
October 1943 Himmler stated:

When -- I believe it was in 1937 or 1938 -- the great show trials took place in Moscow,
and the former czarist military cadet, later Bolshevik general, Tukhachevskii, and other
generals were executed, all of us in Europe, including us in the [Nazi] Party and in the
SS, were of the opinion that here the Bolshevik system and Stalin had committed one of
their greatest mistakes. In making this judgment of the situation we greatly deceived
ourselves. We can truthfully and confidently state that. I believe that Russia would never
have lasted through these two years of war -- and she is now in the third year of war --
if she had retained the former czarist generals.23

This probably reflected Hitler's assessment as well, for, according to Goebbels (diary
entry of 8 May 1943): "The conference of the Reichsleiters and Gauleiters
followed.... The Führer recalled the case of Tukhachevskii and expressed the opinion that
we were entirely wrong then in believing that Stalin would ruin the Red Army by the way he
handled it. The opposite was true: Stalin got rid of all opposition in the Red Army and
thereby brought an end to defeatism."24

Finally, the German forgery -- if indeed there was one -- does not exclude the
existence of a real military plot. In fact, all of the SD sources for the forgery
story leave open the possibility that the marshal was in fact plotting with the German
General Staff.25

Thus the story of the "SD-NKVD forgery" is very problematic. Based purely on
hearsay, it abounds in contradictions and outright lies. If it were nonetheless consistent
with the other evidence concerning the Tukhachevskii Affair, it might merit consideration
despite it all. but the opposite is true.

The only pre-war account of any plot to frame Tukhachevskii is that of Walter
Krivitsky, which concludes that the NKVD possessed its own evidence against Tukhachevskii
quite independent of any forged dossier.26
This coincides with the opinion of Heinz Höhne, the most recent student of the forgery
plot from the German and SD side.27

Important testimony asserting the existence of a real conspiracy including
Tukhachevskii and other military leaders comes from Nikolai N. Likhachyov, better known as
Andrei V. Svetlanin. A lecturer in Russian at Cambridge, then journalist and finally
editor (1955-65) of the émigré Russian journal Posev, Svetlanin claimed
second-hand knowledge of the conspiracy as a member, during the mid-1930s, of the staff of
the Far Eastern Army (later the Red Banner Far Eastern Front) commanded by Marshal
Bliukher.

In this account, the military and party leaders executed during 1937 as part of the
"Tukhachevskii Affair" were in fact part of a wider conspiracy the central
figure in which was Yan Gamarnik.28
Chief of the Political Directorate in the Army, Gamarnik had probably begun the plot,
together with Tukhachevskii, as early as 1932. By the time of the Seventeenth Party
Congress in 1934, it was well developed. The plotters, motivated by the disastrous
consequences of collectivization, were said to have considered two distinct plans. Plan
"A,", originating with Tukhachevskii and the young commanders around him,
centered on a coup in the Kremlin, to be supported by party and military leaders in some
of the provinces. Plan "B,", envisaging independent revolts in different border
areas of the USSR, originated with Gamarnik and the state and party officials in the plot,
and was the version finally approved by the conspiratorial center. The Far Eastern Region
was to have been the site of the initial revolt.

Svetlanin never claims to have been a part of the conspiracy himself which, he insists,
was limited to men of the highest rank. Apparently no one of his acquaintance in the Far
Eastern Army believed the Tukhachevskii Affair to have been a frame-up against innocent
men. His story can be partially checked from independent sources, the main one of which is
the account by Genrikh S. Liushkov given to the Japanese interrogators after his defection
to them in June, 1938 (Liushkov, head of the Far Eastern NKVD, had been sent there to help
the 1938 purge). Liushkov disclosed to the Japanese the existence of an plot in the Far
East, and his account of the plot confirms Svetlanin's in several minor respects.29

Curiously, none of the post-1956 Soviet accounts have revealed any information other
than that which was already available in the West, and draw principally upon the SD
accounts of the forged dossier. Even the Western sources used by Nikulin, the
"official" Khrushchev-era biographer of Tukhachevskii, are carefully pruned of
evidence they contain that suggests some real conspiracy in fact occurred. there is,
strictly speaking, so Soviet post-Stalin historical account of the Tukhachevskii Affair at
all, since Nikulin's work, upon which all others rely, is filled out with dramatic dialog
and frankly termed fictionalized (povestvovanie).30

Taken single, none of these bits of evidence is very significant in itself. But when
considered as a whole, they constitute at lest a prima facie case that some real
military conspiracy involving Tukhachevskii may have actually existed. Nor is it difficult
to understand why Khrushchev might have wanted to rehabilitate real conspirators.
Khrushchev used the rehabilitations of the Tukhachevskii group as a stick with which to
beat Stalin and, more importantly, remaining "Stalinists" in high places -- that
is, in order to hold power and support certain policy decisions. The Soviet military elite
regards Marshal Tukhachevskii and those associated with him as the fathers of the
contemporary Soviet armed forces.31 To
accuse Stalin of having wrongly killed them was at once to make of the military a firm
ally and to blacken any policies associated with Stalin's name.

In conclusion, each of the points concerning Tukhachevskii mentioned in the Austrian
BKA document is consistent with other, independent evidence. The "SD forgery
plot" story, and the Khrushchev-era versions of the Tukhachevskii Affair, have been
accorded a degree of scholarly acceptance that is not justified by the contradictions and
inconsistencies which abound in them. Any new study should examine them far more
skeptically than has hitherto been the case. The present scholarly consensus
notwithstanding, there is little about the Tukhachevskii Affair, including the very basic
matter of Tukhachevskii's guilt or innocence, about which we can be certain.

Montclair State University

APPENDIX

--N.A. Series T-120, Roll No. 1448, page D 567 777.

Now as always there are efforts under way within the Wehrmacht which aim at the
possibility of an alliance with the Russian army. The argument is simple: the Russian army
cannot be taken care of by force; therefore it should happen in friendship. Fritsch,
Admiral Raeder, and even General von Reichenau are rumored to be proponents of this plan.
Blomberg is seen as a mere accessory (Figurant). But the proponents of these
efforts are found chiefly among the younger school of the General Staff. When he was in
Berlin on the occasion of last year's German autumn maneuvers, Marshal Tukhachevskii
offered, in return for Colonel-General Fritsch's toast to the Russian army in Würzberg, a
toast to the German army as the champion against world Jewry, and to General Göring. The
power struggle presently taking place in Russia, which might possibly end with Stalin's
fall and the establishment of a military dictatorship, is being followed by the Wehrmacht
with closest attention, and with unconcealed sympathy for a solution of that kind.

***********************************************************

* I would like to thank Professor J. Arch Getty, of the University of California at
Riverside, and Professor S.G. Wheatcroft, of the University of Melbourne, who read and
commented upon earlier versions of this article. Naturally they are not responsible for
any shortcomings it still contains.

REFERENCES

1. Khrushchev's "secret speech" to the Twentieth congress
of the CPSU (February, 1956) attacked Stalin for his "annihilation of many military
commanders" after 1937, but did not mention any of the executed officers. Marshal
Tukhachevskii was first "rehabilitated" in 1958. See Robert Conquest,
"De-Stalinization and the Heritage of Terror,", in Alexander Dallin and Alan F.
Weston, et al., eds. Politics in the Soviet Union: 7 Cases (New York:
Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966), pp. 57-58. Virtually all Western scholars today accept
Khrushchev's story; e.g. Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the
Thirties, rev. ed. (New York: Collier Books, 1973), pp. 300-02.Back

2. Conquest, Great Terror, p. 285; Leonard Shapiro, "The
Great Purge,", chapter 6 of Basil Henry Liddle-Hart, ed., The Red Army
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956), p. 70. Professor John Erickson, in his authoritative
work The Soviet High Command (London: Macmillan; New York: St Martin's Press, 1962,
p. 464 and note), states that "not a single item of evidence has emerged to justify
the charge of treasonable contact with the Germans," and "no post-war evidence
has come to light to disprove this."Back

9.Ibid., nn. 97 and 98, citing Gen. Renondeau's letter to
Paris of 5 October and 28 September, 1937. For Uborevich, see Walter Görlitz, History
of the German General Staff, 1657-1945 (New York: Praeger 1962), p. 307 (German
edition 1953). The whole affair is omitted, however, from Görlitz' Kleine Geschichte
des Deutschen Generalstabes (Berlin: Haude & Spener, 1967). Since the Austrian BKA
report was compiled in December 1936-January 1937, it is impossible to be certain whether
it refers to maneuvers in autumn 1935 or in autumn 1936.Back

10. On the question of this visit (or visits) see Castellan,
"Reichswehr et Armée Rouge," pp. 217-18; 224; also Pierre Dominique,
"L'affaire Toukhatchevski et l'opinion française," L'Europe nouvelle, 19
June 1937, p 590; Ian Colvin, Chief of Intelligence (London: Gollancz, 1951), pp.
39-40; Erickson, Soviet High Command, pp. 411-13, and 729, n. 27. Disagreement
exists about what Tukhachevskii did during this visit or visits but it is sufficient for
our purposes to note that all agree he did visit Berlin in 1936.Back

11. Pierre Fervacque, Le Chef de Larmée Rouge: Mikhail
Toukatchevski (Paris: Fasquelle, 1928), pp. 24- 45. Remy Roure was one of the most
prominent journalists and newspapermen in France in his day, a founder of Le Monde
and its political editor from 1945 to 1952, when he left it for the conservative Le
Figaro. See the necrology by Louis Marin-Chauffier, "L'Honneur de Notre
Profession," Le Figaro, 9 Nov. 1966, pp. 1, 32; also, "La Carrière de
Remy Roure," ibid, p. 32.Back

15. For tensions within the Soviet military leadership, see John
Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin's War with Germany. Vol. I (New York:
Harper & Row, 1975), p. 3; and idem, Soviet High Command, passim.Back

16. There is no evidence that these dismissals (the famous
"Fritsch Affair") had anything to do with Tukhachevskii. What linked Neurath
with Fritsch and Blomberg was opposition to Hitler's plan to move swiftly against Austria
and Czechoslovakia. See Harold C. Deutsch, Hitler and His Generals: The Hidden Crisis,
January-June, 1938 (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1974), pp. 64, 70- 71,
258-66.Back

17. Fritz Thyssen, I Paid Hitler (New York: Cooperative
Pub., 1941), p. 163. According to Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., "Fritz Thyssen und das
Buch 'I Paid Hitler',", in Turner, Faschismus und Kapitalismus in Deutschland
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973), p. 95, n. 20, the Tukhachevskii-Fritsch
passages occurs in one of the few chapters in German in the original manuscript of the
book and so probably reflects Thyssen's personal work (Emery Reeves, Thyssen's
ghost-writer, conducted his interviews with Thyssen in French).Back

18. Erickson, Soviet High Command, p 464. According to
Professor Alvin T. Coox, the Japanese considered Polish intelligence to be "the best
anti-Soviet service in the world at the time." See his "L'Affaire Lyushkov:
Anatomy of a Soviet Defector," Soviet Studies, 20 (Jan. 1968), 406.Back

21. Naujocks' story is in Gunter Peis, The Man Who Started
the War (London: Oldham Press, n.d. [1960]), pp. 76-103. The names of the printing
establishments Naujocks claimed to have visited in trying to find a forger do not occur in
the very complete lists in the Berliner Adressbuch of 1932, 1936 or 1938. Erickson
rejects Schellenberg's account of the forgery because "it certainly took longer that
four days to prepare the dossier" (Soviet High Command, p. 735, n. 25); what
then can be said of the later Naujocks account, which states that the forgery took place
in one night? Finally, Naujocks' account of the Polish border incident (the
"Gleiwitz transmitter" affair) set up by Hitler as a cause de guerre.,
has been proven heavily falsified; see Jürgen Runzheimer, "Der Überfall auf den
Sender Gleiwitz im Jahre 1939," Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 10
(1962), 408-26.Back

21a. This is a reference to the assassination attempt on
Hitler of 20 July 1944. Back.

22. Archiv des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte (Munich), Signatur
ZS 2, Bd I., page 55. This document contains the notes of conversations between Günter
d'Alquen, an SS officer present at the Himmler-Vlasov interview, and a co- worker of
Jürgen Thorwald, the German author. The ambiguous (perhaps deliberately so) phrase
"das Gesetz der Masse" could refer either to the law of inertia or to the
behavior of the masses. In either case it means about the same thing. Thorwald cited the
phrase in Wen Sie Verderben Wollen (Stuttgart: Steingrüben-Verlag, 1952), p. 394.Back

23.Trial of the Major War Criminals before the
International Military Tribunal {Nuremberg, 1949], Vol. 29, p. 111 (Document 1919-PS).Back

26. Walter G. Krivitsky, I Was Stalin's Agent (London:
Right Book Club, 1940), pp. 257-58. But Krivitsky's book is harshly condemned as
untrustworthy by his friend of many years and wife of his assassinated friend Ignace
Reiss; see Elizabeth Poretsky, in Our Own People: A Memoire of 'Ignace Reiss' and His
Friends (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1970), pp. 71; 75, n.2; 124; 146;
204, n. 1; 211, n.1; 269-70. See also Castellan, "Reichswehr et Armée Rouge,"
pp. 233, 2234 & nn.; 257, n. 194, for criticisms of Krivitsky.Back

27. Heinz Höhne, The Order of the Death's Head: The Story
of Hitler's SS, tr. Richard Barry (New York: Coward-McCann, 1970), p. 233; similarly, idem,
Canaris, tr. J. Maxwell Brownjohn (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1979, p. 248.
Höhne interviewed other German sources and also studied the SD survivors' accounts; while
accepting their story of the forgery plot, he believes it was not the cause of the arrests
of Tukhachevskii and the others.Back

28. A. Svetlanin, Dal'nevostochnyi zagovor
(Frankfurt/M.: Possev-Verlag, 1953). Details about Likhachyov/Svetlanin's life are given
in the necrology by N. Tarasova, Grani, No. 61 (1966), pp. 82-97. A very
intelligent discussion, from an émigreé viewpoint, of Svetlanin's account of the
conspiracy took place in the pages of the journal Posev in 1949-50; for a complete
list of the articles, see ibid, No. 32 (1950), p. 10, n. I am indebted to the late
Professor Nikolai Andreyev, of Cambridge, England, for additional information about his
colleague and personal friend, Mr Likhachyov, alias Svetlanin.Back

29. See the article by Coox cited in n. 18 above. The post-war
Soviet defector Grigory Tokaev also claimed first-hand knowledge of high-level military
opposition to the Stalin government which survived even the military purges; he knows
nothing of any Tukhachevskii involvement, however. See his Betrayal of an Ideal
(London: Harville Press, 1954), and Comrade X (London: Harville Press, 1956). A
Soviet dissident account of the Khar'kov trial, in November, 12969, of the engineer
Genrikh Altunian (Khronika tekushchikh sobytii, No. 1, pp. 312-13), states the
following: "IRKHA, witness for the prosecution and party organizer of the military
academy at which ALTUNIAN taught, stated at the court that it was still not certain
whether Komandarm I. Iakir's rehabilitation was correct (`eshche neizvestno, pravil'no li
reabilitirovan komandarm I. IAKIR')." Robert Conquest also cites this quotation,
though without identifying his source, in the introduction to Pyotr Yakir, A Childhood
in Prison (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 12973), p. 17.

Altunian was involved in dissident activities with Pyotr Iakir, son of the general
condemned with Tukhachevskii. According to Victor Krasin, Iakir and he were tried in 1973
for collaborating with "the old Russian émigré organization, the National Labor
Union (N.T.S.)." (Victor Krasin, "How I Was Broken by the K.G.B., The New
York Times Magazine, 19 March 1984, pp. 71, 75). Founded in the 1930s as a
fascist-type organization the N.T.S. collaborated closely with the Germans during their
invasion of the USSR. George Fischer, ed., Russian Émigré Politics (New York:
Free Russia Fund, 1951), p. 72. Iakir had thus been working with a fascist group whose
"ultimate goal" is "the armed overthrow of the Soviet régime"
(Krasin, p. 71). Almost precisely these activities constituted the most dramatic charges
against Iakir's own father, condemned with Tukhachevskii -- charges which Iakir believed
were false. In a further irony, it was the N.T.S. publishing house,
"Possev-Verlag," that published Svetlanin/Likhachev's 1952 book in which the
author claimed direct knowledge of a plot against the Soviet government by Iakir,
Tukhachevskii, and the others (Svetlanin/Likhachyov went on to edit Posev, the
N.T.S's main journal, from 1955 until his death in 1965).Back

30. Lev Nikulin, Tuchachevskii: Biograficheskii ocherk
(Moscow: Voenizdat, 1964), pp. 192-93. uses the account of the forgery plot and President
Benes' involvement taken from Colvin and Churchill, but omits all their evidence for the
marshal's guilt. The Soviet reader would never suspect that Colvin, Benes, Churchill, and
the SD agents all believed there really had been a Tukhachevskii conspiracy (Nikulin also
leaves out Colvin's name, making the source harder to identify). Cf. Colvin, Chief of
Intelligence, pp. 39-40, and 42; Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), pp. 288-89; Memoires of Dr. Edward Benes: From Munich
to New War and New Victory (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949), pp. 19-20, 47.Back